


Role Model

by geniusphilester (gorgeousnerd)



Series: PFF Bingo 2019 [2]
Category: BBC Radio 1 RPF, Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Coming Out, M/M, Past Nick Grimshaw/Harry Styles, Queer Themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-09 10:30:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20851982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gorgeousnerd/pseuds/geniusphilester
Summary: "It meant a lot to me," Dan said again, carefully. "You and your friends being who you were. Still does."Dan reconnects with Nick Grimshaw after he comes out.





	Role Model

**Author's Note:**

> For my commitment space on my bingo card. (I thought there was a nice double meaning here: two gay men committed to their boyfriends, and also two gay men committed to being out.)
> 
> Thanks to my Twitter mutuals for their encouragement and help checking canon for both DNP and Nick, especially aurora_84, annemari, and junkshopdisco. The night Dan and Phil spent at Nick Grimshaw's was something they briefly touch on in [TABINOF](https://geniusphilester.tumblr.com/post/188073071281/for-reasons-heres-a-screencap-from-tabinof-where), and there's video/[gif](https://geniusphilester.tumblr.com/post/188060843910) evidence. [This video](https://geniusphilester.tumblr.com/post/188060490221/larryisbeautiful-grimmers-all-my-faves-x) was on Nick's Vine and was notable in Nick/Harry circles because it focused on Nick's neon Enjoy sign for a moment, which Harry gave to Nick. 
> 
> I've been saying for years that I'd write something with DNP and Nick, and I finally did it.

Nick Grimshaw's new flat was larger than the one Dan had been in before. The change reminded Dan of the switch between the first London flat that he and Phil had shared and the one they were in now. Nick's definitely wasn't a rental, though. It was big, and there were custom touches that Dan felt, in his limited experiences with Nick, were very Nick.

Dan and Phil didn't actually greet Nick first, beyond an initial hello. Pleasantries were interrupted by the scuffling of nails on hard floors, and the scuffling was quickly followed by two faces low to the ground. Dan felt his mouth stretch into a wide grin as both dogs barreled directly toward him, and he knelt to greet them.

"Dogs love him so much," Phil was saying fondly above him. "I scare puppies and babies, for some reason."

Nick said something vaguely flirty back that barely registered with Dan because the larger white dog was on her back, baring her belly for pets, and the smaller black dog was half up on Dan's leg, and he didn't have enough coordination to pet them both and follow conversation. Partially because he was too busy talking fondly to the dogs.

"What are their names?" Dan asked after a moment, when the dogs had calmed marginally down and the conversation had reached a lull.

"Pig and Stinky Blob." This didn't come from Nick, but from the extremely fit younger man who had appeared beside him.

Dan grinned wider as the dogs ran off to play and he got back to his feet. He had white fur on his ripped black jeans, but that fit the exact aesthetic he wanted: monochromatic colours, dogs. 

"I like those names," he said, offering a hand to the new man.

He shook it. "I'm Mesh. You're Dan?"

Dan nodded. "Nice to meet you."

"You two don't smoke, do you?" Nick asked, looking between them.

"No, but I can stand upwind," Phil said with just the right amount of cheek. Nick and Mesh laughed and led the group out to the back garden.

September was, thankfully, more pleasant in London than August had been. There had been some drizzle early in the day, but it wasn't cold, and it certainly was nowhere near the boiling that the worst heat waves of the summer had been. Dan, in his still-slightly-unseasonable sweater for midday, didn't have any problems keeping cool in the shade.

Nick's back garden was perfect for dogs to romp in, and for Nick and Mesh to fill their lungs with tobacco smoke. Dan had been around smokers a lot more back in the Radio 1 days; he'd forgotten, until the smell reached his nose. He always associated musicians with either the smells of tobacco, alcohol, or weed. That went for DJs as well, apparently.

Phil and Mesh were talking in the corner about something, which suited Dan fine. It had been Phil's idea to reconnect with some of their old colleagues; since they weren't looking to be in radio again, it wasn't networking. It was friendship from shared experiences. Dan wasn't sure he bought the idea entirely, but he was okay with expanding their social circle a bit. Or fixing it?

"So how many gay men do you get flirting by talking about your coming-out video?"

Nick had appeared at Dan's side. Dan laughed, only a little uncomfortable. It barely registered compared to the twinges he'd felt in the past. This was more "oh right, I'm hanging out with an extrovert" and less "you know I'm gay and this is going to ruin my life".

"A few," Dan said. It wasn't actually that many, but he'd been in more queer spaces lately, and men flirting with him who knew exactly how he identified was novel enough that it felt more prominent than it was. "You one of them?"

"Me? I'm old and monogamous now." Nick's dry tone was betrayed by his fond smile at Mesh, who flashed Nick a smile of his own when he caught it. "Wait. Does it count as monogamy if you pull with your boyfriend?"

"You're asking the wrong guy."

Nick hummed. "Yeah, you and that one have been monogamous forever, haven't you?"

It still made Dan's breath catch a little, that people could see it. That Dan purposely drew attention to it in a video with words, which seemed to be what people cared about in terms of confirmation. He supposed he couldn't begrudge anyone needing him to be incredibly obvious; after all, the vague spaces were how he had stayed closeted as long as he had.

"Yeah," Dan said, voice mostly even. He bit his lip, and followed up with what he was thinking. "But you've known that for a while, haven't you?"

"You mean, I heard you two snogging in my toilet years ago."

It was nice that Dan was in a place where he could smile at the memory. He and Phil had been drunk on Nick Grimshaw's couch after their Radio Academy win some six years ago, and Dan had let his guard down more than he probably should have. Maybe it was the headiness of being in a space with someone who was out in their career as well as their personal life, someone who had deliberately been out in interviews when getting one of the biggest radio shows in the country. Maybe it was one of Dan's moments where he hated himself and his cowardice, and being with Phil was the thing that made everything worth it. It was probably some combination of both.

At any rate, he'd blown Phil in Nick Grimshaw's loo, and they'd returned to the general group mussed and marked. If all Nick heard was snogging, Dan must not have been as obvious as he'd thought.

(To be fair, everyone had been very drunk.)

"It's sweet," Nick said, something approaching genuine in his tone. "I always felt like a bitter old man when I looked at you two."

"You're not that much older than Phil."

"A couple years can be a lifetime."

Dan knew that better than anyone. "Bitter, though?"

Nick's smile went a bit tight, and Dan winced. He didn't know Nick well enough to ask those kinds of questions.

"I mean..." Dan sighed. "You being who you were meant the world to me, then. I was partially outed at the time, and it felt like the end of the world, but you...you did the Breakfast Show."

_You were gay on the Breakfast Show_ went without saying. The papers were a bit shit to Nick, from what Dan could tell when he bothered with them ever, but it didn't stop Nick from having a long tenure being a gay man on a morning radio show meant for teenagers and young people. 

Nick pulled a cigarette out of a pack and put it to his mouth. Dan quickly checked, and yes, he was upwind from Nick.

After he lit the cigarette and took a drag, Nick looked at Dan. "I wasn't sure what was going on with you, then."

But he had known something. Dan had always known that much; Dan ended up looking at Nick, when they were in similar areas, like a dehydrated man looks at a glass of water. Dan had been unsubtle in so many ways.

"So did you..." Dan trailed off as words escaped him. He laughed quietly. "I wish gay people shared some psychic network that the straights don't have access to. I would have talked to you about so much, then."

"I dunno. I feel like I got a couple things across to you."

He had. Dan had always wondered how much of it was intentional. They held looks with each other occasionally at staff gatherings, not with any sexual or romantic tension or anything, but like they were both thinking things very hard at each other. Dan's had been "dear god tell me I'll survive this". He'd always read Nick's as "you will survive this, and you'll be better off than ever". Probably Dan didn't need that kind of support; after all, Phil was living proof of what good things came when Dan waited long enough.

No, who was he kidding. He absolutely needed that support. He needed to see a gay man who he wasn't in love with living his life. He needed to be seen by gay men. He needed something that wasn't the isolation his queerness had given him all his life, before he'd even known it was there.

Dan nodded a little. "You did."

The looks were intentional, then. It was probably less intentional that Dan had seen clothes in Nick's bedroom - his only toilet had been attached to it - that were definitely not Nick's. People less into clothing - and straighter - wouldn't have noticed any difference. The clothes were similar to Nick's, and really, if Dan hadn't been mentally cataloguing which designers Nick could afford, he probably wouldn't have noticed the sizes were slightly different. And not in the "my weight fluctuates a bit so I have multiple sizes" kind of way.

He hadn't thought of it much at the time. But then he'd gone home and looked at the One Direction posters in his own loo, and it was like a bell had rung in his head.

There was no way Dan could ask about it at the time. Nick was out and open, but if Dan had read the signs right, Harry Styles was still dwelling in the ambiguous spaces that Dan knew well. Dan had mentioned Harry in his coming-out video for a reason. But more than that, Nick was living with a man that wasn't Harry Styles, and while he wasn't going to go digging through Nick's closet, Dan didn't need to look to be pretty sure that there weren't any Harry-sized clothes in the house anymore.

He stared at Phil, who looked extremely awkward next to Mesh, who still looked like a male model or whatever he was while he smoked.

"It meant a lot to me," Dan said again, carefully. "You and your friends being who you were. Still does."

There was a moment, and Dan didn't know how to read it. For a moment, he was furious that he would automatically worry about misinterpretating, that the greater world had made it so impossible to talk about core parts of a human without words getting twisted and privacy invaded. That the world would pass judgment on something that should have been easy and natural and destroy what it could.

He exhaled hard, and Nick took another drag on his cigarette.

"Thanks," Nick said.

For a moment, they stood together in the garden, not more than two gay men enjoying the last bits of summer. When the moment ended, they rejoined their party.

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr post!](https://geniusphilester.tumblr.com/post/188073225896/role-model-1802-words-by-gorgeous-nerd)


End file.
